


you, lingering

by ninemoons42



Series: Dragon Age Inquisition - Kiriya - Original Flavor [23]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Heterosexual Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-12 05:39:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5654464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen and Kiriya take the night off, and talk about how they need it.</p><p>(Well, they don't just *talk*.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you, lingering

“How much farther?” 

Cullen looked over his shoulder, surprised.

The first words out of Kiriya’s mouth since he’d led her, silently protesting, out of Skyhold.

The sun was falling away from its zenith, a bright golden drop in a slowly darkening blue sky, throwing light onto the wild waves of the Waking Sea.

The foothills of the Frostbacks were lingering shadows behind them. Ahead were the dusty paths that led off the Imperial Highway; behind was a fork that led towards Jader. A flock of sheep and an indifferent, barefoot shepherd whose russet-furred dog had barked at them as they passed. The strong smell of salt and wave-washed rocks in the air. 

And Kiriya, now, riding up to his side. 

“You didn’t want to come,” he said, gently, smoothing a lock of dark hair away from her bronzed cheek. “You said this would be a waste of time.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Forgiven. Now let’s not think about it,” he said, and he took her gauntleted hand in both of his, and brought it to his mouth. Ghosted a kiss over her leatherbound knuckles. “There’s a forward camp just ahead. No more than half an hour away, I should guess.”

“There’ll be people there,” she murmured.

He shook his head. “I might have asked Leliana to tell her people to clear out. Just for a day or two. They can continue with their scouting duties, but they’re not to disturb us.”

“Why, I could almost think you’d spent a lot of time planning for this.”

Cullen threw her a smirk. “That is for me to know and you to find out.”

Kiriya’s smile could almost rival the bright burnished sun, now, and though she said nothing in response she continued to ride with him -- and so he could spend a few moments admiring her, and worrying about her. Her hands, steady on the reins -- but her shoulders, slumped with weariness. Lines in her face that he more often saw in his own. 

“Last night I woke up from a bad dream,” Kiriya said, as they maneuvered up a gently inclined cliff-edge path, “and I heard the echoes of your voice in the room. You -- you had woken up from your own nightmares. You had been shouting. Are you -- are you all right?”

“Are you sure I shouldn’t be asking you that question?” Cullen said, and he kept his eyes on the dust and the little rocks beneath his horse’s hooves. “It’s been three weeks since Adamant, and you’re still crying yourself to sleep.”

“We could have done something to prevent that whole mess from boiling over.”

“We did,” he said, as firmly as he could. “You stopped the Grey Wardens from falling entirely under Corypheus’s thrall. And you’ve personally stopped Erimond and that nonsense of his about preventing the Blight.”

“And the Grey Wardens paid the price.”

“I will not argue with you on this, Kiriya,” he said, sighing, and the salt-laden air scraped at his throat, oddly comforting. “We’ve been over this, again and again. We -- there’s no reason for us to keep thinking about what might have been.”

“I know. But I can’t stop myself.” He watched as she dashed a tear away from her cheek.

“Can you -- try to think about this place, instead?” 

And it was a weight off his shoulders, off his weary heart, to see her shiver, and put her arms around herself, and nod. A single determined movement. “Yes. Tell me about this place.”

“The forward camp is just over that ridge,” he said, and he led her past the half-circle of rocks smoothed by salt and sand, towards the two tents flanking a deep fire-pit.

“And now I know why we didn’t bring any supplies,” she murmured as he tethered his horse, and then hers. 

Cullen looked up as she inspected the bundles of neatly cut wood stacked next to one of the tents. “Thank Leliana,” he said, coming up to her, and letting her lean on him. 

“I will.” 

The constant winds whipped her hair across her eyes, across her cheeks, into the corners of her mouth, and he kissed her, gently, on her forehead. “Be with me. Please.”

Her arms winding around his waist, and the lavender scent that still clung to her salt-streaked skin, and the soft pressure of her lips against his throat -- Cullen bent to her, cupped her cheek in his gloved hand -- kissed her, slow soft lingering.

His reward was her sigh.

How long they stood there kissing, he didn’t know -- until, smiling, she carefully pulled away from him. “Kiriya,” he said, dogging her footsteps.

“The sun will be setting soon enough,” was all she said, however, and then he was helping her set the camp up. Water from a nearby well -- cold and sweet on his tongue, on his hands. A package that had been signed with the single letter _L_ , waiting in one of the tents -- and the startling wafting scent of plums. 

“Cullen,” Kiriya said, and he ducked out of the tent.

He had been wondering why her voice had sounded faint.

She was sitting very near to the edge of the cliff. An unimaginable plunge to rocks and wild water, whipped into salt-edged foam. 

As he watched, she set her vambraces aside, her gauntlets, her leather breastplate. 

Silently, he passed her his coat -- and she smiled, and draped it over her shoulders. The ends of her hair caught on and in the furred ruff.

He followed suit, setting the pieces of his armor into a neat stack.

Kiriya was transfixed by the sun’s glittering edge as it seemed to touch the sea, the distant line of the horizon.

He was caught on the dying-flame sunlight as it splashed onto her skin.

Lengthening shadows all around.

When the sun had almost completely set, she held her hand out to him, and he pressed up against her side. He wrapped her in his arms. Felt her kiss his cheek.

“I never spent much time by the sea, back in Ostwick,” Kiriya said, and her words were almost swallowed up in the continuing sigh of the waves and the wind. “And when I was running wild I saw little reason in taking to the coast -- there were Chantries there, along the roads, and I couldn’t risk being spotted by Templars.”

“And now?” he murmured, into the breeze that riffled her hair. “If your sisters called you back?”

“I’ve thought about it,” she said, quietly. “But before I can answer that question I have to know what will happen to -- to all of us, to the Inquisition. If we defeat Corypheus -- if we get out of this alive -- ”

“You will,” Cullen said, quiet and vehement. “You will. You have to.”

“If we get out of this alive, then -- what do our soldiers do next? What do you and Cassandra and Josephine and Leliana do next? Will we disband, or will we continue to fight? I wish there was a way to know what the future has in store for us.”

“You seem to be doing fine, without it.”

He watched over her shoulder as she turned her gloved left hand over. The mark’s green glow seemed to flare more strongly as the evening began to settle in around them. “Sometimes I wonder if I’ll be carrying this thing around for the rest of my days,” and there was a tremble in Kiriya’s voice. “And I wonder what that will mean for the rest of my life.”

There didn’t seem to be any words for that. All he could do was hold her tightly, was murmur soothing sounds into her hair, into the back of her neck. 

“I think I’d like to go to bed now,” Kiriya said, after a moment. “Do you -- do you want to come with me?”

“Yes,” he said.

As he retrieved his armor and hers, he watched her kneel at the edge of the fire-pit. Flint and sparks and a compact pile of wood, and soon there was warmth and light to banish the shadows, and she was lighting a candle off one of the spent pieces of kindling, and carried it into the tent with the bedrolls.

Flickering light as she took off her clothes, soft groans falling from her lips. Adamant and the Grey Wardens and the Fade had left their marks on her, and those were only the most recent in her collection, and he held out a hand to her. Waited for her to turn around and take it -- and he gathered her into his arms. Listened to the reassuring beat of her heart.

He heard her say his name. Looked up when she smoothed her fingertips over his cheek. “Still here,” she said, “and I have you to thank for the reminder. I have you to thank for pulling me away from the others, from Skyhold, from the voices in my head.”

“Still here,” he repeated, and he pushed away the constant pain in his nerves, the regret that weighed down his shoulders. He stripped away the clothes he was still wearing, the fears he was still carrying around.

Here was Kiriya, kissing him, running her fingers through his hair, bearing him down to the ground. Here was Kiriya, warm and vital and _real_ , and not about to fade into the hideous specters of his nightmares. Not about to wither away into green wisp-light.

She pulled away and he opened his eyes, and touched the lush dampness of her mouth -- red and swollen from their many kisses. He touched the lines in the corners of her eyes and the fading bruises that hugged the angle of her jaw. He ran his fingers through her hair and caught a glimpse of white strands in the candlelight -- white strands that she had not been able to pluck out, what with the organized chaos of the Inquisition -- 

No. He shook his head, and tucked those errant strands behind her ears, and with the other hand he smoothed a warm line down her arm, over the dips and knobs of her spine, the curve of her hip. “May I?” he whispered.

“Yes,” was her reply -- and he kept her eyes on the dark flush rising in her cheeks even as his fingers sought the very core of her, sought the springy curls and the wet heat of her. Teasing and stroking and finally pushing into her, gently. Letting her settle onto his hand, rocking back and forth, slowly at first, slowly and then more insistently. Expressions crossing her face, concentration and need and then, and then that bright shocking flash -- “Yes, there, Cullen _please_ \-- ”

Wide-eyed silence as she reached her peak, as she fell over it, shivering in the aftermath.

As carefully as he’d pushed into her, he withdrew -- she made an unhappy sound above him and he quickly soothed her, pressing his mouth to her collar bone and sucking hard, worrying her skin with the barest edges of his teeth.

Words falling into the spaces between them, Kiriya’s breathless gasps and pleas, fanning the fire of his need for her.

“Up,” he whispered against the bruise he’d left on her skin.

He had to help steady her as she rose onto her knees, as he sat up and guided her to straddle his lap. Her heels pressing into the small of his back as she settled against him. That same searing bright shock that lit him up, when she met his eyes and smiled. When she leaned close and brushed her lips against his skin, when she whispered, “I’m all yours.”

So he said her name, and kissed her, and worked a hand between the two of them. Hissed at his own touch. How little it took for him to grow ever more desperate in his desire, and how so very much she gave him -- for she was pushing his hand away, for she was wrapping her fingers around his cock, her mouth fallen open, dazed and delighted as she stroked him firmly. 

He groaned and she laughed, softly. 

“Kiriya.” Was he pleading with her? Was he encouraging her? He was breathless. He was blind with need.

This time she said his name. “Cullen,” and then she was shifting over him, holding him steady, guiding him carefully into her.

He gritted his teeth. Too good, too good, as she took him in and held him tight. She was fire rushing in his skin, she was the bright shock of clean sword-slice, and he fought to hold on to her, to be with her, in this endless moment -- 

She was moving, she was taking his hands -- one cupped around the back of her head, the other pressed firmly to the small of her back -- and then she was looping her arms around him, she was tipping her forehead against his. “Move, Cullen, move.”

He couldn’t help it -- he cried out as he thrust into her -- again and again and again.

He could hear her, as if from a great distance, urging him on -- as though the sweet grip of her body weren’t already spurs and whips to him.

“Harder, harder -- _ah, ah, Cullen, yes_ \-- ”

“Kiriya, Kiriya,” he chanted her name over and over, as she drove him further, and with each thrust he threw himself towards the precipice, that yawning edge of endless bliss -- 

He was so close, so close -- 

And he felt her go still, felt her body clench around him, sudden shocks spearing through her.

His hands were falling to her hips. He was holding her still, holding her impossibly close, and still she was calling encouragement, calling his name.

Suddenly -- the precipice. He was no longer moving toward it -- it had opened up beneath him -- 

Grateful, wordless, breathless, he fell.

Crashing back into himself: her labored breaths. The sweat that trickled down his sides. The weight of her in his arms, in his lap. Her fingers tugging on his hair, through sweat-dampened curls.

He opened his eyes and kissed her. “Thank you.”

“Thank _you_.”

There would be plums for later. 

Right now, there was her.

**Author's Note:**

> I am also on [tumblr](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/) and my Dragon Age: Inquisition blog is [here](http://ninemoons42-inquisition.tumblr.com/).


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